Twitter Launches Geotargeting for Promoted Tweets

Late in July, Twitter formally announced theywere promoting a new tool that would allow marketers to target tweets to specifics users of the social network, allowing them to fine-tune their social marketing efforts.

The new feature allows advertisers to tweet at a user based on their geographic location -or- whether they access the service via mobile or desktop solutions.

“Today we’re introducing targeted Tweets, an enhancement that enables brands to reach specific audiences on Twitter without first sending a Tweet to all followers,” Twitter product manager Kevin Weil stated in a blog post. “Until today, it’s been impractical to send these kinds of highly tailored Tweets, since there was no way to reach people in New York without also reaching followers in Norway, Nebraska and Nigeria who can’t take advantage of your offer.”

This offers a major bonus for brands that do segmented product launches among their audiences – particularly global brands. Imagine being able to set a launch date for several countries with tailored tweets going out at set times for users in each country?

Thus far Twitter has tested the new service with major brands including Coca-Cola and British Airways. Now that testing has completed, advertisers around the world can use the newly enhanced tweet box at ads.twitter.com

Twitter Goes for the Gold

If you think there’s still apprehension around Twitter for many big brands due to its financial viability, think again. One only has to turn to the flood of tweets around the Olympics and major brands in recent days to measure the popular appeal of Twitter. Twitter has become a major player in social and big brand advertising.

“We can service the very biggest brands in the marketplace,” Adam Bain, the company’s president of revenue and key advertising strategist, said in a recent interview. “The conversation that’s happening on TV, or happening live is also happening on Twitter. That’s very valuable.”

Social Media – Where The Giants Roam

Ad giants have said their early experiments with Twitter have proven invaluable. For example, Pepsi partnered closely with Twitter for a rebranding campaign. Once launched, the promoted tweets of Pepsi garnered 68 million impressions in a single day. 24% of users who saw those paid tweets clicked, replied or helped broadcast through retweets.

“We saw some phenomenal results with those ad products,” said Shiv Singh, the global head of digital marketing for Pepsi Beverages. Singh said it was “extremely likely” that Pepsi will ramp up its spending on Twitter.

With the new geotargeting, we can expect to see a lot more brands – especially local main street business owners – getting into the social marketing game.

I’ve only received a few and I used the Block button though I don’t know if that works in this situation. I don’t read Promoted tweets at all. If I start receiving too many I’ll simply stop using Twitter in the same way I’ve stopped using YouTube since the advertising took over and wrecked what I used it for. Accepting advertisements to cover costs is a necessary evil and I understand that but advertising that wrecks the experience is unacceptable and coupled with the spreading spam on hash-tags of TV shows this is happening to Twitter.